MEMORIAL OF ORVILLE A. DERBY 19 



science that he was unable to bring himself to take an active interest in 

 the economic geology of the country; but his first and only interest in 

 geology was in geology as a pure science. To him a fossil was a thing 

 of beauty, of interest, and value, and a joy forever: but a mine or an 

 industry was, after all, only an industry whose main object was money- 

 getting. 



It goes without saying that Derby and I did not always agree about 

 geological questions, but our very disagreements tended to stimulate care- 

 ful work and finally to disclose the truth. An interesting illustration 

 was our disagreement in regard to certain beds in the black diamond 

 regions of Bahia; be called them Paraguassu and I called them Caboclo. 

 After a year of proving each other in the wrong, he was induced to send 

 his assistant, Boderic Crandall, to the region in question to settle the 

 dispute. Crandall went and reported that we were not speaking of the 

 same things ; that both series were legitimate, and that we were botb right. 



Derby was a man of unlimited gift. When once he decided on a course 

 of action, nothing turned him to the right or to the left. His whole life 

 is a demonstration of his power to make good in spite of obstacles that 

 would bave been insurmountable for most men — his determination to 

 devote his life to the geology of Brazil, cost what it might. 



How many of us would have lived for forty years in a foreign country, 

 cut off, as he was, from all personal contact with the geologists of the 

 world at large and from the people of his own race and from bis own 

 family ? From the time he went to Eio, in 1875, to the day of his death — 

 a space of forty years — he visited the United States only twice. The first 

 of these visits was from January to June of 1883, when he went to Wash- 

 ington to arrange for the publication of Dr. C. A. White's Contributions 

 to the Paleontology of Brazil, an epoch-making work on South American 

 paleontology. He spent part of that time in Boston, ISTew Haven, "New 

 York, and Philadelphia. His other visit was made in 1890, when lie 

 attended the Indianapolis meeting of the American Association, and re- 

 turned to Eio by way of England. 



When the Commissao Geologica was stopped, in 1877, the rest of us 

 took to our heels. Not so Derby; he was not to be stampeded by a simple 

 lack of funds or of employment; he meant to save the results of the work 

 of Hartt and of his colleagues, and, so far as it could be done, he did it. 



Personally Derby was one of the kindest hearted and most affect innate 

 men I have ever known. His time, Ins sympathies, and his last dollar 

 were at the service of his friends; and his rigid hand knew nothing of 

 the kind deeds done by his left. The beggars in the streets found him 

 their easiest victim. 



